How to peel and chop an onion like a chef

Dani Valent

Step 1: With the root facing up, cut onion in half from the root down to the top. Place the flat side onto a cutting board. Peel the onion, pulling the skin back from tip towards root. Photo: Chris Hopkins

Step 2: Cut off the tip of the onion (note: the root should face left (or right, if you're left-handed)). Photo: Chris Hopkins

Step 3: Starting on the away side of the onion, slice it from the root end to the top, leaving enough onion connected at the root to hold it together. Photo: Chris Hopkins

Step 4: Make horizontal slices, from the top of the onion towards the root. Photo: Chris Hopkins

Andy Harmer, chef at QT Melbourne's Pascale Bar & Grill, was 16 when he left home to work at the Imperial Hotel in Devon, England in 1996. On day one he was given a five-kilogram bag of shallots to peel.

"I cried my eyes out for an hour but as I did it, I realised how the layers work, how the root holds it together," he says.